Stormwalker

by Allyson James

  I started to laugh. I leaned on the steering wheel and laughed until tears trickled from the corners of my eyes. It felt good to have something to laugh about. I was laughing at myself as much as at them, for blundering in and spoiling their moment.

  No wonder Nash had turned so red when I suggested that he and Maya get together. No wonder Maya always grew angry and uncomfortable when she talked about Nash. The tension between them was thick enough to cut. Small wonder it had burst out like this. It couldn’t have been going on long, or Fremont would have been sure to tell me.

  I wiped my eyes, started up the SUV, and pulled out of the driveway. I didn’t see Jones’s sheriff’s SUV or even an anonymous car near Maya’s house. He obviously didn’t want anyone to know he’d stopped at Maya’s, and I had probably just blown his cover.

  Chuckling, I turned onto the highway to drive back through town. I was still minus an electrician, but at the same time, finding Nash and Maya in flagrante had cheered me up.

  Halfway between Magellan and the hotel, red and blue lights flashed in my rearview mirror, and the sheriff of Hopi County, presumably with his clothes on this time, pulled me over.

  Sixteen

  I waited with hands on the wheel for Nash to reach my SUV and lean on the open window. “Hello, Officer,” I said, smiling. “Is there a problem?”

  Nash’s hands tightened on the sill. “Don’t you say one damn word about what you saw, Begay, do you hear me? Maya doesn’t need any kind of talk about her.”

  I suppressed my laughter at his discomfort. Poor Jones. He had no idea how to handle something so personal. “Don’t worry about me, Sheriff. It’s none of my business.”

  “Maya and I used to go out,” he said, as though needing to explain. “Before Amy. I’ve been worried about Maya since she found the body in your basement. I stopped by to talk to her about it, and things . . .” He trailed off.

  “Just happened?” I shrugged. “That’s natural, especially if there was something between you before.”

  “Keep it to yourself, all right?”

  “I hadn’t planned to say anything at all. Like I said, it’s none of my business.” I looked at him in curiosity. “Why do you want to keep it such a secret, anyway? I don’t think anyone would blame you.”

  Nash took his hands from the windowsill, and when he spoke his voice was hard. “It’s not that simple.”

  “Why not? I think even Chief McGuire would understand that you were trying to move on with your life.”

  “I’m not moving on. Not like this.”

  “That’s something you need to work out with Maya.” I straightened up, reaching for the gearshift. “I won’t say a word, if you don’t want me to. I like Maya; I wouldn’t want to see her get hurt. But she does need to get her butt back to my hotel and finish my electricity. Will you tell her that if you talk to her again?”

  Nash straightened up without answering, his frown in place. I put the SUV in gear, and pulled away, spinning my tires a little bit, just to annoy him. When I looked back, I saw him glaring and patting dust off his perfectly creased trousers. I laughed again, and drove on.

  My good mood lasted all the way to the hotel. Inside, the workers were carrying on, but Mick hadn’t returned. My irritation surged. Again, he was insisting that he keep tabs on me without telling me anything in return.

  I went to the saloon and whispered to the mirror, “Do you know where Mick is?”

  “Search me, darling. No, really, I’d love it if you’d search me.”

  “If he’s in trouble, you tell me, all right?”

  “I might if you give me the right incentive. Like wriggling those pants off your sweet little buns. Or going down on your honey-bunny where I can watch.”

  I gave it a withering glance. “Forget it.”

  “Don’t be such a sourpuss. By the way, sweetie, have you thought about doing something with your hair? That ‘ready-for-fighting’ ponytail does nothing for you.”

  Fremont wandered into the saloon and gave the room a puzzled look. “Do you hear a noise in here? Like a buzzing sound?”

  I glared at the mirror. “It’s nothing important.”

  The mirror gave me a raspberry, and Fremont frowned at the room. “Did you find Maya?” he asked.

  I coughed into my hand. “She was busy. By the way, I never knew that she and Jones used to be together.”

  “I didn’t tell you that?” Fremont sounded surprised he’d forgotten to pass on an important piece of Magellan gossip. “Yeah, they were pretty hot—this was before he shipped out to Iraq.” Fremont rested his toolbox on the bar, taking on the interested look he got when relating some juicy tidbit. “He picked up with Maya again when he got back, but it wasn’t long before they had a bad fight. A knock-down, drag-out, screaming fight—right before he decided to run for sheriff. Actually, I think that was one thing they fought about. People said you could hear them yelling all the way from her house to the diner. Finally Jones storms off, and the next thing you know, he’s going out with Amy.”

  “Kind of sudden,” I said.

  “Amy was good for him. She calmed him down. She smiled at him and held his hand like a real girlfriend. Maya was a firecracker, always riling him up. Amy was more like cool water. Jones was head over heels in love.” Fremont lifted his box. “Then Amy up and disappeared. Poor thing. It’s been hard on her folks. And Jones.”

  “I know.”

  “I think if they can all just find out what happened, they can put it to rest. Closure, people call it.”

  “Maybe.”

  Fremont looked sad, as though he too searched for closure on something.

  The workers banged away until about five and then cleared out in a hurry, as they always did at quitting time. Mick still hadn’t returned, and I didn’t want to call him to ask where he was, as much as I wanted to know. I thought about Coyote’s warning about Mick, and my grandmother’s as well. He has great earth magics, though his have an evil taint. Watch him.

  I took myself to the Crossroads Bar, ready for a cold one. White clouds tinged with gray were spilling down from the south. The pressure built into a tingle up under my skin, and I started to itch.

  “Just a beer,” I told Barry as I slipped onto a barstool. “Where is everyone tonight?” The room was half-empty, unusual for five-thirty in Magellan.

  Barry drew a draft into a chilled mug and plopped it in front of me. “People are saying I killed that woman from California.” He rested his hands on the bar top, his expression frustrated. “But I never met her. I’m from San Bernardino; she was from Ventura. Might as well be different planets.”

  “If it’s any consolation, I don’t think you did it.”

  “Tell that to my customers.”

  I sipped my beer, which was generic and weak. “I’d think a grisly murder would be a draw. You could point out my hotel as the scene of the crime. Tourists would flock to you.”

  “Tourists, sure. But a lot of guys who come here aren’t comfortable with the police wandering around investigating. If you know what I mean.”

  I glanced at the bikers lounging at tables and the bar, or playing pool in the back. No, they probably didn’t want Sheriff Jones walking through here, his eagle eyes on everything they did.

  “I’m trying to get it cleared up.”

  Barry thumped another mug under the tap and pulled the handle. “I’m sorry, but what do you think you can do? You’re not a cop. People are saying you’re a psychic, but I haven’t seen you do anything psychic.”

  “Because I’m not psychic.” I sense auras and talk to magic mirrors, yes. Predict the future or see the past, no.

  “Then what can you do?”

  I didn’t answer, because I didn’t know. I’d come here to stop my mother from hurting others, and I had no idea how to go about it. My grandmother’s revelations told me that my mother had been hurting people for a long time—why did I think I could do anything about it?

  However, I knew one lady I was going
to put up against a wall and have a long chat with. Maya Medina lived on Amy’s street. She’d been home the day Amy disappeared. She admitted to me that she’d hated Amy, and now I find out that Jones had dumped Maya and taken up with Amy without breaking stride. Yes, I definitely wanted to talk to Maya.

  “Hey, sugar.” A bulky man squashed onto the barstool next to me, taking the beer Barry had finished pouring. Barry moved down to refill more drinks, leaving me alone.

  The man stank. Body odor, I thought, but then the tingle inside me grew to an all-out burn. He had brown hair and dark eyes, a nose that had been broken, wide lips that looked swollen.

  “I notice your boyfriend isn’t here,” he said.

  “Not yet.”

  He leaned a little toward me, his nostrils widening as he took in my scent. His aura was smoky, and I knew what he was.

  Nightwalker.

  “What he don’t know won’t hurt him, right?” the man was saying.

  Not all Nightwalkers were blood-crazed beings who sucked people dry and left a trail of bodies in their wake. I’d met one or two who were calm and civilized. They stayed inside during daylight hours, drank animal blood, and made sure no one saw them do it. Nightwalkers were rare and usually solitary, and knew that to stay alive, they needed to pass for humans and suppress their bloodlust.

  But there were plenty of Nightwalkers who didn’t care. They reveled in their strength and their ability to mesmerize their victims, sometimes feeding off them for months before they finally let them die. They lived recklessly and adhered to one philosophy: “Kill or be killed.”

  It took me all of two seconds to decide that this Nightwalker was in the “kill or be killed” camp. He sensed my blood beating beneath my skin, and he wanted to sample it.

  “Listen,” I said. “You don’t want to mess with me.” The storm was moving in, my body firing up in response.

  He touched my cheek, his fingertip ice-cold. “Your mama sent me to bring you to her. But she doesn’t care what I do to you first.” The finger moved down my face, his eyes dark, seductive, hypnotic.

  I had a sudden vision of myself, half-drained and weak as hell, being carried to the vortexes, the white mists swirling around me in glee, sucking me down. My mother’s voice . . . Ah, daughter. At last.

  Thunder rumbled, and the vision splintered. I drew a breath, touching the comfort of the storm. Its insanity I could deal with. I smiled. “No, I mean, you really don’t want to mess with me.”

  The Nightwalker seized my wrist, fingers clamping to the bone. “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll get on your knees and make me very, very happy. Then we’ll take a walk in the desert.”

  The hell we would. I lifted my hand, fingers tingling. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  Before he could react, I jammed my hand over his face. The Nightwalker yelped as a net of electricity snaked out of my fingers and whipped itself around his head. He tried to jerk away, but I held him in a solid grip.

  I leaned toward him, speaking in a low voice. “Listen, Nightwalker, and listen good. I haven’t killed you, because I don’t want to explain to Barry why one of his customers disintegrated to a bloody pulp on his barstool. So I’m going to let you walk out. You go tell my mother you were stupid enough to try to capture a Stormwalker while her power was rising. Think about what she’ll do when you explain that to her.”

  The Nightwalker jerked back, rage on his face. I released him. My fingers had burned a netlike pattern into his skin, and he stank of burned blood.

  “Bitch!” he snarled. He pulled a gun from his motorcycle vest and pointed it at my head. “You’re dead.”

  Someone shouted. Drinkers around me hit the floor or pulled out their own pieces. My temples were pounding, the storm happy to play with me. I pushed aside the pain and reached for wind, which I channeled to the barrel of the semiautomatic. The pistol’s opening squashed flat as though crushed by an anvil. The Nightwalker stared at it, his mouth a round O.

  “Not tonight, dickhead,” I said.

  The Nightwalker’s lips pulled back from his fangs. He went for me at the same time Barry brought a shotgun out from behind the bar and cocked it. “Get out.”

  Nightwalkers aren’t quite the same as vampires in the movies. Blowing a Nightwalker’s head off is just as effective as stabbing it with a wooden stake or decapitating it with a sword. If Barry shot him, this one would be as dead as if he were really human.

  The Nightwalker looked at Barry, closed his mouth, and shoved away from the bar. “Fucking Stormwalker. In the end, you’ll be dead. I’ll dance on your grave.”

  “Not during daylight,” I said.

  He snarled and strode out the open door as more thunder rumbled. But by the flare of the next lightning strike, I saw that the Nightwalker had disappeared.

  I decided not to linger. Some of the bikers were laughing, but others eyed me in anger. I dropped a ten on the bar for Barry and went back to the hotel, where the glowing wards on the walls comforted me. The Nightwalker wouldn’t be able to cross them.

  The encounter worried me, though. Why my mother had sent a minion to capture me while a storm rose, I didn’t know, but she must have had a reason. A storm had been rising when the skinwalker had attacked the night I’d been riding back from Flagstaff. Why not when it was calm and I couldn’t fight? Why not the night she’d sent the skinwalkers after Mick?

  I had no idea, and my head hurt too much to try to figure it out.

  Even with my worry, I dropped off quickly, tired from the day. The storm changed direction and drifted away, the better for me to sleep. My headache receded as it left.

  In the dead of night, the magic mirror started screaming. I sat up straight as the windows of my lobby came crashing in.

  Seventeen

  I was up and into my jeans before the rest of the front windows broke. I slammed on my motorcycle boots and slithered out the bedroom window as a horde of bikers hammered down my beautifully carved front door.

  The Nightwalker couldn’t cross the wards by himself, no. But if he recruited humans to batter my doors and windows and rounded up a sorcerer and a few skinwalkers to combat my marks, he could get inside to kill me. Or simply let humans or skinwalkers do the job for him. My best bet was to run.

  Where to go? Down the railroad bed into town? I could get to Jamison and Naomi, hole up in their house while the police sailed in and took care of the humans.

  I had my cell phone out as I scrambled up the empty railroad bed, but headlights pinned me when I reached the top, motorcycles rolling toward me from either direction. A couple more waited to the east of the empty track, and still more got between me and the hotel.

  Another storm rumbled against the mountains to the south, too far away for me to use against so many. They had guns, different makes and calibers gleaming in the moonlight. Even my storm powers at full couldn’t stop bullets from penetrating my flesh.

  I clutched my cell phone, determined to at least punch 9-1-1, but the thing shattered in my hand as a gunshot rang out. Bits of plastic cut my fingers, my hand stinging as what was left of the phone was ripped from it.

  The motorcycles closed in. These guys weren’t teasing me, and I smelled the stink of skinwalker in their midst. Nightwalkers could mesmerize and control skinwalkers if they wanted to, and I knew damn well who was controlling the Nightwalker. She might not want me dead, but I was pretty sure she didn’t mind if I got battered while her pet Nightwalker dragged me to her.

  I leapt from the railroad bed and made for a gap between the motorcycles, running like hell for the hotel. Hands reached to grab me, but I was fast and tricky. A few punches and kicks, a spring over the back of a bike, and I was sprinting for the hotel again. Bullets bit the dirt at my heels until someone in the gang ordered them to stop. They needed me alive.

  I had an idea, the only one left. Mick’s light magic spells were gone, the storm was still too far away to help me, Mick was elsewhere, and I didn’t see Coyote around. I was
out of options.

  I pounded into the hotel with motorcycles on my heels. As I thought they would, the human gang drove right through my smashed front door and into the lobby, where a few skinwalkers and the Nightwalker awaited me. Up on the balcony, a guy who looked like an ordinary biker had his eyes closed, chanting and chanting, his voice already hoarse.

  The Nightwalker grabbed me. The damned thing was strong. I jabbed my fingers into his night-black eyes, and he snarled, lips pulling back to bare his fangs. His face was crisscrossed with little red lines where my electricity net had burned him.

  I punched him between the eyes, avoiding his mouth. Once a Nightwalker latches its teeth into any part of your body, that’s it. They don’t let go until they suck you dry.

  The Nightwalker danced back long enough for me to get past him to the saloon. I hauled myself up onto the shiny new bar, put my hands on the magic mirror, and screamed, “Find Mick!”

  It gasped. “Oh, my God! Sugar, look out!”

  I hit the bar as a shotgun opened fire. The mirror broke, a hole in the center radiating spiderweb cracks in slow motion. The mirror started shrieking, but it didn’t die. Magic mirrors were notoriously difficult to destroy.

  Hands reached for me, skinwalker stench making me want to vomit. I fought, kicked, bit as humans grappled with me, punched me, and tore my clothes. I was weirdly grateful to the maniacal bikers from the bar who wanted to teach me a lesson—while they pummeled me, the skinwalkers couldn’t grab me and rip me down the middle. Only a matter of time, though.

  The humans not holding me shot up everything in sight. The newly plastered walls, the varnished paneling, the bar, the tin ceiling. Thank the gods I hadn’t hung my pictures yet—they were still stacked in the back of my bedroom closet.

  Someone lifted me by the shirt, and I found myself facing the Nightwalker.

  “You know what I’m going to do to you, right?” He leaned close to me, bathing me in breath reeking of blood and booze. “I’m going to fuck you until you can’t see straight, then I’m going to pass you around to my new friends. And then I’m going to drink you, just enough to make you weak as hell when I drag you to the vortex and throw you to her.”